The Juggernaut would only spawn in the middle, lower, and deep floors.
No matter how much damage the upper floors sustained, the mechanism would never trigger.
Because the upper floors were constantly blanketed by the immense divine will of the Great God Ouranos.
But below the middle floors, Ouranos's divine presence no longer interfered.
Thinking of this, Ryuu hesitated no longer.
She steadied her breathing, burying all her fear and confusion deep in her heart, transforming it into ice-cold killing intent. With a blur of motion, she vanished into the darkness leading to the deeper floors.
Shortly after Ryuu disappeared into the dark tunnels, the 27th Floor—completely devastated by the fierce battle between the Loki Familia, Childe, and Aiden—finally welcomed its most terrifying anomaly.
Crack—!
A sharp, crisp sound, like shattering glass, abruptly echoed through the cavern.
Without warning, a massive fissure appeared on the crystal wall that had already suffered countless strikes and was riddled with scars.
The crack was wide, long, and incredibly deep.
As if standing in defiance against the cascading Great Fall plummeting from above, it fractured vertically at a heart-stopping speed.
What initially burst from the fissure was liquid.
Boiling hot enough to instantly vaporize water droplets and billowing with thick white steam, a viscous, foul purple fluid poured out like blood welling from the depths of hell.
The fluid squirmed as if alive, gushing from the crack and rapidly polluting the crystal-clear, blue-jade waters into a murky, foul-smelling swamp.
The fissure continued to expand.
It was as if it was prying open its own womb. Every expansion sent a massive shower of crystal shards flying, accompanied by a teeth-grinding groan of failing structural integrity.
Finally.
Deep within the bottomless abyss of the fissure, two ominous, blood-red eyes suddenly flashed.
[Despair] was born crying.
Accompanied by a piercing, high-pitched screech that shattered the crystal walls and threatened to puncture eardrums, that thing quietly emerged from the crack.
It spawned from the wall of the colossal cavern and plummeted like an overripe fruit.
Splash—!
Kicking up a massive geyser of water, it landed in the devastated waterfall basin.
Its first cry upon hitting the ground wasn't a baby's wail, but a warm exhale dripping with the stench of destruction.
It stood silently in the water, letting the earth-shaking cascade of the Great Fall hammer relentlessly against its pitch-black, hideous skin.
The thick white mist permeating the air blurred its silhouette, making it look ethereal and surreal.
It didn't let out a battle cry or howl like a wild beast.
It merely swished its long tail, bristling with bone spurs, and used its two powerfully muscular hind legs to kick up rippling waves across the water's surface.
Amidst this chaos, the two blood-red dots resting deep within its eye sockets flashed once more, as if analyzing this unfamiliar world.
Slowly, at the edge of the sprawling, lake-sized waterfall basin, it bent its explosively powerful joints, making its knees emit a disturbing creak.
In the very next instant, the creature vanished.
At the same time, on a relatively intact cliff overlooking the collapsed zone on the 27th Floor, a figure quietly appeared.
It was a Cat Person youth missing his left ear and with his right arm severed cleanly at the shoulder.
He had messy, short brown hair, and his green eyes gleamed with madness and paranoia.
He stood there silently, looking down at the hellscape below—collapsed floors everywhere, berserk monsters slaughtering each other like a tidal wave, the entire space saturated with chaos and destruction.
It all silently testified to just how catastrophic the preceding free-for-all had been.
The Cat Person let out a raspy laugh, sounding like coarse sandpaper.
"But... thanks to you all, I've finally figured out... the method to birth 'it'."
His remaining left hand tightly gripped a black whip embedded with a blood-red gemstone.
His face twisted into a grotesque cocktail of fear, excitement, and extreme psychosis, rendering his features utterly hideous.
"Gale... just you wait... wait for me!"
He growled through gritted teeth, pure hatred bursting from his eyes.
"I'll make you... show that face again. That face... full of despair and terror!!"
He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing his excitement, and began to carefully observe the environment below.
"A floor collapse of this magnitude... that 'monster' should have been born by now. I must... find it as soon as possible."
As he spoke, anticipation and thrill crept back onto his face, as if finding the monster would immediately guarantee the completion of his four-year vendetta against the "Gale"—Ryuu Lion.
"Hey, Jura, let's get out of here. Something feels really wrong about this place. Plus... if Valetta and the others find out we sneaked out, we're dead meat."
An equally shifty Werewolf youth urged nervously from behind him.
This Cat Person youth named Jura Halmer—formerly known by the alias "Slave Cat"—was an executive of the Evilus-aligned Rudra Familia, and its sole survivor.
Four years ago, the Rudra Familia orchestrated the ambush on the Astrea Familia, which through a twist of fate, led to the birth of the Juggernaut and ultimately caused the total annihilation of the Astrea Familia.
In the aftermath, the surviving Ryuu Lion single-handedly wiped out the entire Rudra Familia using the most brutal methods imaginable, even indirectly sending their patron deity Rudra back to Heaven.
But Jura didn't die.
Driven by his pathological obsession and hatred for Ryuu, he clawed his way to survival, hiding in the shadows of the Dungeon and lingering on like a rat in a sewer.
For the past few years, he had been frantically researching how to birth the Juggernaut once again, conducting countless twisted experiments.
He lusted after the monster's power, craving to command that apocalyptic despair to exact his revenge on Ryuu.
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